The King's Man
by liesmyth
Summary: And when Eddard Stark arrives in King's Landing with his sister's body and his sister's son, he doesn't quite know where to go next; and when Robert asks him to stay he says yes, and Ned trades in the cold vastness of the North for a new life and a white cloak, and life goes on. [COMPLETE]
1. we should've been heroes

Title bears no relation to that other fandom I'm currently obsessed with. I've just had this in my draft folder since… last February? Or something. Wow. That's a long time to sit on a story, which is why I whipped it into something vaguely resembing posting shape and uploaded it here.  
But. This 'verse is nowhere as developed as it could have been so, like. Feel free to play with it if it strikes your fancy.

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 **The King's Man**

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 **i.**

The firstborn child of Lord Brandon of House Stark and his lady wife, Catelyn of Riverrun, is a son, born with his mother's coloring and bearing his grandfather's name. The new Lady Stark names him Rickard, for Lord Brandon's beloved father, and when the news reaches the host of the North, all the men toast to the future Lord of Winterfell.

Around the same time another child is born, a daughter with blonde hair and grey eyes, and thankfully nothing of her father in her features. Her mother names her Dayne; and if it's a name she has no right to, no one is around to tell otherwise. The child will grow up with neither father nor mother, and everyone who knows is quick to say that it is all for the best.

It's not quite a moon's turn later, when the war has been won and the dead avenged, that some of the northmen receive news of another newborn with Stark blood, a babe with eyes the color of steel and dragon's blood running through his veins. His mother names him Jon with her last breath, for one of the Kings of Winter, and it is decided soon enough that the boy's very existence should never reach the ears of the Iron Throne.

And when Eddard Stark arrives in King's Landing with his sister's body and his sister's son, he doesn't quite know where to go next. His father's home is Brandon's home now, and that of Brandon's new wife, and his son, and he doesn't think he could go back _there_ without Lyanna.

And so when Robert asks him to stay he says yes, and Ned Stark trades in the cold vastness of the North for a new life and a white cloak, and life goes on.

 **ii.**

King's Landing is odd; the air is too warm and the sky nowhere as bright as he'd have expected, thick dust clouding everything. Everyone Ned meets greets him as _Ser_ ; they all speak too loud, their jokes too bold and clothes too bright for Ned's tastes. He's left his gods in the North, and half his heart.

It's the end of the summer and still warm enough that Ned finds it hard to breathe, night after night, lying down in his too-narrow mattress in his pristine room in the White Swords tower, dreaming of Lyanna and deaths and regrets.

If he hadn't taken so long to get to Dorne, perhaps she would still be alive. If he hadn't wasted time arguing with Robert and Ser Jaime, and half Lord Tywin's army. If he hadn't been so blind in Harrenhall, too drunk on youth and summerwine and Lady Ashara's eyes, too gone to even have an inkling of the thoughts swimming in the grey depths of Lyanna's mischievous eyes.

Ned's nights are full of ghosts and his days are no better, an endless parade of victors and new friends, all the foundations of Robert's kingdom. Robert himself doesn't want to have much to do with it, it seems like – his only suggestion of notice is to make Ned the Lord Commander of his news Kingsguard, and it takes both Ned and Jon almost a full day to talk him out of that one.

For the rest, Robert spends his day locked up in the king's quarters, stripped bare of any Targaryen finery, drinking himself to sleep and crying Lyanna's name in his dreams while Jon makes sure to have Lady Cersei and her following welcomed to King's Landing and settled in the Red Keep.

Ned himself isn't keen on the idea of their new Lannister queen – not the daughter of the man who had Rhaegar's children so cruelly slaughtered, not the sister of the knight who drove his sword through the Mad King's back – but Jon is always quick to point out how Casterly Rock will bring Robert riches and power; and every king needs a queen.

They make a striking couple, Robert and Cersei on the steps of the Grand Sept, young and golden and beautiful. The new queen looks lovely in her crimson dress, and Ned tries to picture Lyanna in her place, hair braided up in that intricate southron style, stepping side by side with Robert between the adoring crowds. Would Lyanna smile and wave, he wonders, or would she look down to her feet, shy and defiant at the same time?

It doesn't matter, Ned tells himself. Lyanna would have hated to be queen.

 **iii.**

He names Lyanna's son Jon Snow, in hope he will be half as good a surrogate father to the child as Jon was to him.

Jon himself takes it better than Ned could ever have expected, considering. Not many men would appreciate to have a close friend's bastard son named after then – a distant relation, perhaps, or a trueborn heir; but not a dear friend's bastard. The Lady Lysa, Jon's young and gloomy Tully wife, is quick to remind Ned of the offense, none too subtly at that; but it's her own husband who stops her.

"Young Jon is the only son Ned will ever have, my lady," Jon tells his wife, and Ned doesn't miss Lysa's flinch when Jon touches her on the arm. _That must be one cold marriage bed_ , he catches himself thinking before realizing how disrespectful that is.

"I appreciate it much, Ned," Jon says to him later that night, and Ned nods to him in gratitude. It was Jon who arranged for the child to be settled in one of the lesser lodgings in the Keep with a wet nurse to look after him, never asking Ned anything about the boy's mother, though Ned knows how much he wants to.

Jon, like everybody else, must have heard the rumors about Ashara Dayne, and Ned certainly let him believe so. He's regretting it now, more and more with every day the child grows to look like a Stark, no trace of the dragon in his northern features and dark hair, but he couldn't have risked it. He remembers the Sack all too well, those crimson capes soaked with the blood of children.

Sometime close to Jon Snow's first nameday, he calls Ned _Da_ for the first time. He finds he rather like the sound of it.

 **iv.**

Queen Cersei doesn't like Ned any more than Ned likes the Queen's family.

There's a strange sort of symmetry in that, he finds; oddly comforting – as a Kingsguard, Ned is mostly removed from the games of the court, but he still finds it hard, sometimes, to tell a true friend from an enemy. The Lannisters, at least, make it easy.

Ser Barristan tells him once that Cersei doesn't like him because he's Lyanna's brother, and Ned can't help but laugh at how wrong the Queen has it. _Her Grace knows she cannot compare to Lady Lyanna in the King's heart_ , Ser Barristan says, which is a nice way to put it. _She thinks perhaps he might forget her, if he did not have you every day to remind him of her_.

Ned politely thanks Barristan, doesn't tell him how it's not their place to discuss whatever passes through the Queen's mind. They are friends, he and Barristan; or at least as close to friends as Ned can be with the man who watched his father burn – after all, he figures there must be a reason why he doesn't write to Brandon nearly as much as he should.

Still, Barristan clearly thinks he's helping Ned, the way he sometimes does by showing him how to navigate some of the worst turns of Robert's courts, but he's wrong on all accounts on this one. Or, more precisely, Cersei is. Even if Ned hadn't been there in King's Landing, he doubts Robert would ever have thought Cersei could compare to Lyanna. _Hell_ , he thinks. Even if Robert had married Lyanna, he doubts she could ever have compared to the perfect woman Robert had always wanted her to be.

 **v.**

Things with Robert are strange at best, strained at worst; same as they have been since the death of Rhaegar's children, and never quite recovered. Robert, the rebel and the friend, had a passion and an easygoing way to him that Robert the king cannot hope to match.

These days Robert leaves Jon to govern the realm, requesting Ned's presence more and more often just to keep him company, wandering about as if they were still boys in the Vale. Perhaps, Ned wonders, they've been too soft on Robert from the start, him and Jon, coddling him in the wake of Lyanna's death. Perhaps they should have done more; perhaps it was nobody's fault. Not all kings have what it takes to rule.

When Robert's son is born, two years after the end of the war, they are in the Kingswood with the largest hunting party Ned has ever seen. Robert has not even tried to pretend he didn't plan it that way, and Stannis's disapproval is clear in the set of his jaw, in every line of his face; but Ned himself tries to stay out of it as much as he can. The Baratheon brothers will always drag his name into their arguments, he's noticed, whether he's there or not, but he sees no reason to speed the process along.

It's easy, to fade into the background – far too easy. Sometimes Ned wonders if King's Landing has made him soft, just another courtier with no opinion to speak of, but that's his place. He's a Kingsguard not a lord, Ned resolutely tells himself every day, and it's not his position to advice Robert on anything unless he specifically asks for it. Robert is his friend, but also his king; and Ned his white shadow.

It's not a bad way to live, he thinks; but sometimes Ned wonders just how much of himself he's already lost.

 **vi.**

Cersei names her firstborn Joffrey, a Lannister in all but name, from his golden curls to the rich crimson of his nursery draperies. Robert merely shrugs when he hears the name, for all that Stannis's scowling enough for the both of them; and it's three whole days after the prince's birth when his father visits him for the first time.

Ned trails behind him, as does Jaime Lannister; and for as much as Robert looks unimpressed and eager to be done with the whole thing, Jaime's gaze is fixed on the child, unblinking, and Ned is suddenly remembered of for all his unsavory reputation, the Kingslayer is hardly more than a boy.

"I've never much cared for children," Jaime tells him later that night, unprompted, though Ned supposes he's been pretty obvious in his blatant study of the other knight. Serving with Jaime is… odd, for lack of a better reason. He killed a king, and Robert – and the whole realm – will never let him forget it; but he's got a sort of magnetic air about him, and his dry sense of humor almost makes up for his unrelenting support of Cersei in all things.

"I don't understand why women like babes so much," Jaime continues, "as does His Grace, I suspect. But _Cersei_ 's child." He shakes his head in contemplation, and Ned excuses himself to go see Jon Snow.

Many times he's entertained the idea of sending the child away, even as the years made it clear that there would be no trace of his father in his features. Here in King's Landing there wasn't much Ned could be offer to the bastard son of a Kingsguard knight, no holdings or titles or any sort of stability; nothing at all except hoping the child would show an inclination for knighthood and give him the means to forge his own path. A meager future for the boy who should have been king, but still better than a broken skull and a Lannister cloak.

Had Ned been a better man, he would have sent Jon Snow to Winterfell, to be fostered alongside Brandon's child. A boyhood companion to the Warden of the North, bastard or not, could make something of himself; but the child was _Lyanna_ 's son, the last and only family Ned would ever have. The South had made him weak, and Jon Snow stayed.

That night Ned is more than glad to take the child off his nursemaid' hands, let Jon walk slowly on his little legs in the peaceful quiet of the godswood, jumping around and falling and trying all over again.

"Da," Jon asks suddenly, head cocked slightly on one side. "You sad?"

"No," Ned assures the boy, smiling. "Not at all."

 **vii.**

Once Prince Joffrey is old enough to be shown in public, Robert decides they will have a tourney to honor the child's birth. It's a popular idea; even the Lord Hand, who's constantly warning Robert against the perils of spending too much, seems to approve.

Ned isn't much for tournaments. As a boy, he always found some way to get out having to attend any; the Great Tourney at Harrenhall had been the first one he ever took part in. Nowadays Robert seems to want a tourney twice a year, at the very least, and as a Kingsguard Ned is honor bound to join the lists. He's never been as much of a jouster as Brandon – as _Lyanna_ – but he can hold his own, usually making it to the last day, if not to the final bouts.

This time he is not so lucky. Ned is to ride out against Jaime Lannister on the second day – or, rather, Jaime is the one to challenge him, to a bout that's nowhere close to being friendly. Jaime goes at him like a demon, angrier than Ned has ever seen him, like pale wind in his white armor, violent and sudden and relentless.

He hits the ground with a thundering noise.

When Ned comes back to himself he's staring at the golden silk of Robert's personal pavilion, Barristan hovering above him.

"You hit your head," he says.

Ned tries to move his hands and feet; finds out he can, but his back hurt. "I never would have guessed," he calls back, and the older knight smiles.

"What did you _do_ to Ser Jaime?" There's honest curiosity in Barristan's voice. The man makes no mystery of his dislike of the _Kingslayer_ , but he's always made a point of treating him exactly as any other of their sworn brothers. "I haven't seen him this angry since…"

Ned doesn't truly want to know what the last time was. He can guess rather easily.

"I don't know," he tells Barristan, and that much is true. "I have no idea."

 **viii.**

Ned goes looking for Jaime the moment he's able to, finding him in his room at the Tower, staring at the white ceiling.

"Eddard Stark!" Jaime calls out the moment he sees him. His gaze is unfocused, and he's slurring heavily. "What a wonder to see _you_ up and about."

"You're drunk," Ned calls out, and Jaime just smiles bashfully up at him.

"That I am," Jaime admits, then laughs. "I am very, very drunk. Have you _ever_ been drunk, Ned?"

Jaime makes for a comical sight, dressed in leathers and curled up on his bed like a small child. His hair is soaked through with sweat, face reddened; and he's never looked so miserable for all the time Ned has known him.

"Not recently," Ned tells him. "No."

Jaime laughs again. "Why, I never would have guessed."

"Tell me, Ned Stark. Do you know what day it is?"

Ned does not. There's no special relevance to this day, historical or otherwise. One year ago, the queen had been with child. Two years ago he'd been with Robert, visiting Highgarden. Three years ago Robert had been newly crowned, not yet married. Four years ago, they'd been fighting in the Riverlands. Nothing special has happened any of these times; no battle or birth or death that Ned can remember.

He tells Jaime as much.

"You have no idea, do you?" Jaime asks him, sitting up on the bed all of a sudden, then wincing. "My head hurts," he explains. Then, "You really don't know. Eddard Stark does not know. And here I thought you and our estme – _esteemed_ Ser Barristan were close."

"I do not know," Ned tells him, inpatient. His head hurts from where he hit the ground, and his back is one messy purple bruise. He came into Jaime's quarter ready to demand an explanation, not to play games. "Are you going to tell me, or shall I go?"

"Go," Jaime nods, "Go guard the King, no doubt. You guard the King as I guard the Queen."

"Did you know, five years ago, I was guarding the Queen," Jaime paused. "Queen Rhaella, mind you. Out her chambers, day and night, when she prayed and when Aerys came visiting. Perhaps you should guard my sister's doors sometimes, Ned. You might learn something."

Ned looks at Jaime and frowns, trying to decipher the other man's words. "I do what His Grace tells me."

Jaime laughs. "That you do," he nods. "Nothing. You never do anything, Eddard Stark. Anything at all."

 **ix.**

A few months later Brandon writes from Winterfell, bringing Ned news of the birth of his second child – a girl named Minisia – and asking whether Ned will ever come North to visit, or if he's scared he cannot take a proper winter anymore.

Ned writes back, _someday_.

 **x.**

When they go to war against the Greyjoys, it's the most alive he's seen Robert in years. They fight and they kill and they cheat death time and time again, and Robert laughs all through it, looking like the Warrior born again.

Wise men curse war, fear the screams of battle and the smell of blood; but Robert seems to be born again, young and handsome and full of life. Ned goes along with it – he knows battle better than he knows politics, he's better suited to advising Robert on how to organize a siege rather than a Small Council meeting – but once the war is over and the Iron Islands dealt with, once Baelon's heir is sent as a ward to Casterly Rock and he's declined yet another of Brandon's polite invitations; once everything is said and done, Robert's face is grey and tense and Ned knows he doesn't want to go back.

 _Back_ is King's Landing, to Cersei and her newborn daughter, another blonde child with far too much of the Lannisters in her green eyes, and that throne made of swords that's just an ugly, twisted thing out of a nightmare. Back is Jon and his well-meaning, disappointed looks, and the endless maze of the Red Keep.

"I shouldn't be king," Robert tells Ned, almost a whisper. "Should I, Ned?"

He ask quietly in the middle of the night, like they're boys sharing a room and whispering about pretty chambermaids.

But Robert's the king and Ned his sworn sword, and a Kingsguard does not tell the King what to do.

 **xi.**

King's Landing is Jon Snow, five years old and stubborn like a mule, who learned his letters just to write messy scrawls he could send Ned along with the Lord Hand's missives. When Ned goes to thank Jon for finding the boy a tutor, the kind smile he gets in answer makes his blood run cold.

"Oh, it was Lord Varys who arranged for lessons," Jon tells hi, casually. "He seems to think quite highly of your boy."

 _That's it_ , Ned thinks. He should send the boy away.

 **xii.**

He should, but he never does. He cares about the boy too much to have him anywhere out of his sight; and sometimes Ned thinks that if Robert had any kind of bond with his children, something that's even half what Jon Snow's smile means to him – maybe things would be better.

 **xiii.**

The years go on. Jon summons Petyr Baelish from the Vale to serve as Robert's new master of coin, and Ned finds it amusing enough to send word to Brandon about it. Brandon writes back, as usual, telling Ned that his children are getting old enough to wonder if their Uncle Ned is just someone their father made up. Brandon has five children now, two boys and three girls. Ned closes his eyes and tries to imagine them all running around the grounds in Winterfell, like he and Brandon and Lya used to do when they were children, but can't quite manage anything but old memories. Benjen married Maege Mormont's eldest daughter not long after the Greyjoy Rebellion, and their firstborn son is named Eddard.

Jon Snow grows up; and if Varys suspects, he never says anything. Ned himself has started to dread the moment when he will have to talk to the boy, explain him why he should leave the Seven Kingdoms, leave him behind. Perhaps he's become selfish, but he rather likes the idea of being all the family Jon will ever have.

Jon starts squiring for Jaime Lannister at age twelve, for all that Ned will never really like the man. They talk often, cordially; and Ned did happen to be guarding Cersei's doors once or twice when Robert came to visit his queen. He thinks he understands Jaime better now, as much as he can, but he thinks he will never understand Cersei.

He wonders if there's a man alive who could ever understand Cersei.

One day, on the third morning of Prince Joffrey's twelve nameday celebration, he notices Stannis walking away from the crowds with Jon following close. They look worried; and when confronted later that day Jon all but admits that it's a serious issue. Ned is surprised they would not make him a part of it, and somewhat resentful; but his sense of dread only grows when Jon puts one hand on his shoulder and tells him, quietly, "I can't do this to you, Ned. You're friends with Jaime Lannister, aren't you?"

A moon's turn later, Jon Arryn is dead.

 **xiv.**

Jon is dead and Stannis left King's Landing in the middle of the night, and Ned finds himself holding vigil besides a cooling corpse, trying to figure out where everything went wrong.

The Sept is desert, and Varys's steps alert Ned to the man's presence long before he starts to speak – but then again, it's Varys. He's only seen when he wants to.

"King Robert would not name his brother the new Hand," the Spider begins. It's not a question but it doesn't have to be; it's well known that Robert would name Lord Tywin to the seat before his own brother.

"Things are about to get complicated, around here," Varys warns him. "Possibly quite… bloody."

 _Has life ever been anything else_ , Ned finds himself thinking. He's not scared – nervous, yes. But not scared.

"You should leave."

This he didn't expect. "I should leave?" he repeats. "Why?"

But Varys only smiles. "You, and the boy. Robert's kingdom is crumbling around him, and I have friends in Pentos."

 _In Pentos_. Ned knows who's hiding in Pentos, everyone knows, and what Varys just admitted is tantamount to treason.

Not that he has any ground to speak of such things.

"You know I can't leave," he tells Varys. How can the Spider even suggest such a thing, he doesn't know. "My place is here."

"Just the boy, then," Varys says – and _there_ it is, what Ned has been expecting and fearing for so long. "He was never safe here."

Ned thinks of Lyanna, and he thinks of Robert and thinks of Jon. Thinks of having to go back to the Red Keep and tell the boy – tell _his son_ that Ned was never his father. Thinks of what will surely follow, angry words and angry silences.

He should have sent Jon away years ago.

"I can't do that," Ned repeats. "My place is with the King. His place is with me."

Varys's answering sigh is almost amused. "You are a good man, Ned Stark," he tells him. "A stupid man. But a good one."

 **xv.**

Life goes on.

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 **AN:** Teeeeny little bit more coming right up.  
In the meanwhile, come hang up with me tumblr - username _qvcksilver_.


	2. Coda

**\- Coda -**

On the day the Queen Mother soiled the steps of the Great Sept with the blood of a traitor, Jon Snow stood and watched in silence, the hooded Spider at his side, knowing it had been all his fault.

 _Don't be so hard on yourself, boy_ , Ser Jaime would have said, mockingly, as he often did when Jon got in one of his moods. Jaime liked to say Jon acted as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders; he was quick to call Jon on it whenever it happened, and even quicker to explain to him, in great details, why the world at large would never be a concern of someone like Jon Snow.

 _You're not even a Kingsguard, sworn to silence and protection. You're a Kingsguard's bastard, lad, and the world won't give a shit give if you live or die_. It was harsh, but it was honest a direct – values Jon had been taught to respect, and found lacking in the court. Jaime Lannister was the most brutally honest person Jon had ever met, had killed a tyrant with no regrets and walked around King's Landing in his white cloak and golden armor, head up high. It was not surprising that, and after years of whispers and half-concealed looks of contempt, Jon Snow had latched to the man with the affection of misfits.

It was not surprising he hadn't told anyone when he'd seen the Kingslayer fucking his sister, even though he should have.

And now he never could. Who would believe the word of a bastard, against that of a queen backed by all the gold in Casterly Rock?

King Robert would have, of course. So mistrustful of both his wife and her brother, so eager to rid his kingdom from the long shadow of Tywin Lannister, so fond of his old friend Ned. He would have believed anything Jon would have said, but Jon had let Jaime catch up to him instead, promised he would never say a thing; and two days later Robert was dead and the Kingslayer had fled to the Stormlands to stave off a new rebellion.

Days later, Jon's still wondering. Had Jaime done it himself, killed another king he was sworn to protect?

If he'll ever see the man again, Jon already knows he would ask. He'd get a honest answer, of that much he can be sure.

Today is not that day. All around him the crowd's roaring, furious. Ilyn Payne is standing dark and silent on the steps of the Sept, holding Lord Renly's dripping head with one gloved hand. A few steps behind him the Hand's wife, Lady Margaery, cries quietly with one hand pressed to her face. The midday sunlight is shining on her chestnut hair and red cheeks, and it's plain from Joffrey's gaze that the king has taken notice of it. Next to him Cersei is frowning, as well as she should. Renly Baratheon was well loved by the smallfolk, more than Robert when he'd first taken the throne, more than his two brothers put together. The disturbances in the city already started two nights ago, and the Storm Lords were close to wage war on the Lannisters, with Mace Tyrell's silent approval.

"It is done," Varys tells Jon, tugging at his sleeve. "We must go. We'll have an easier time getting you out of the city before the riots start."

 _I'll fix this, somehow_ , Jon tells himself before leaving. The world might not care about him but he does not care for the man who taught him those lessons anymore; he owes it to the man he should have been instead, the man his father had always wanted him to be.

The Spider goes, and the bastard follows.

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 ***resolutely marks this as complete***

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Assorted headcanons that totally happened and didn't quite the cut:

++ Ned's fate in this story is the same as Ser Barristan in canon – kicked out of the Kingsguard the day after Robert's death, with Lannister men sent to kill him off. Unlike Barristan, Ned has a bit more places where to go.

++ Jon has a huge-ass crush on Margaery Tyrell, obviously.

++ The War of the Five Kings goes a bit differently here. Obviously the Riverlands have no stake in the war since the Tullys aren't as closely associated to Lannister enemies this time, and neither does the North – that might change depending on what Ned does, but then it might not. Brandon is not all about Truth and Justice like Ned. Margaery is a hostage in King's Landing, but more politically savvy than Sansa was; Littlefinger's still stirring pots somewhere; and Stannis has no brothers left to kill and no reason to doubt his own integrity.

++ As some observant soul noticed, the summary of the story, which I wrote before I started writing and never changed because I like it a lot, refers to Ned as "father and lover and brother, and second son." Like Lewyn Martell and many others before him, the first draft of this story had Ned falling in love with a woman he couldn't be with, to Ned's obvious shame and Robert's obvious amusement.

++ Nothing ever happened except the couple times it did. Arya Stark does exist in this 'verse and her surname is Sand. Ned is still her father, she still likes swords, and she's all the family Jon Snow could ever want.

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 **A/N:** Hey guys. Here's the teeny epilogue, as promised - I never intented this to be a long story, which is why I'm marking this as complete. However, as you might know, I am pathologically unable to let go of AUs I like, so I might come back to this. Then again, I have a bunch of other stories to write.

In the meanwhile, if you guys liked the story - especially if you liked it enough to fave or follow - please do leave a **review**. I feed on feedback, and it _does_ make me go faster.

If this 'verse tickled your fancy, do feel free to play with it. I'm not putting the story up for adoption, but I'd love to read someone else's spin on it if you're so inclined.


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